PrincipalAgent

Brown does have Colgan, McDermott, and Miller who have pretty impressive CVs. Colgan and Miller, however, are both APs so no guarantee they'll stay at Brown.

Piggy backing off of the previous two posters, I cannot stress how important the SOP and the writing sample are. These are the two things that visibly demonstrate whether you can actually do political science research.

Publications for anyone coming into grad school are definitely not a must (though they DEFINITELY help). I would, however, look into writing a Masters Thesis if you have the option. That will send the right signals that you're interested in research and you can potentially have your thesis turn into a journal article so the returns are pretty high to writing a thesis if you are serious about going down the PhD path.

If you're looking to pursue the PhD route, go to whichever program is going to allow you to develop your research skills. My bet is that Columbia is probably stronger in that area as well.

Unless you have some major outside options, I wouldn't worry too much about shaving a year or two off of how long it takes you to get your PhD done. If you're serious about landing a TT job at a decent university, you're going to want to go to the best American university that you can possibly get into. I think the best thing you can do is try to get a serious research paper (hopefully with Dr. Walller as a co-author) under your belt because that is going to give you some serious mileage when applying to PhD programs.

I'm not particularly familiar with the East Asian program at either school, but for an MA I really think that reputation matters a lot especially if you're looking to land internships/jobs during your studies.

This is actually really good to know because I was about show up in jeans and a t-shirt...

Looks like it. Got an email from the chair of the department.

I got into Harvard as well. AS;EISH;LFIHESAZLFIHEASLIFHESAL;IFE!!!!!!!!!!

I recommend going through some of the graduate-level syllabi for IR, CP, and AP to get an idea of what the seminal articles/books are in each of those fields and what you'll be getting yourself into.

In getting an idea of what political science research is and what you would be doing in a PhD program, I encourage you to check out the articles in American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, American Political Science Review, and the Journal of Politics. If that's the type of stuff you're interested in learning more about, then the PhD might be the right option. If not, then perhaps a masters in something more public policy or professional oriented might be a better fit.

Barring an acceptance into Harvard, I'm considering either NYC or Palo Alto. Hard to beat the sunshine in California though...

Officially out at Princeton... Congrats to all that were admitted though! It's an awesome program

That's good news because all hope isn't lost. It's bad news, though, because now I'm going to be incessantly checking my email.